EDITORIAL: Now is the time to remind teams about the inappropriateness of hazing

Aug. 19—Coaches, are you paying attention? Have you seen the news about hazing, this summer and in years past?

Alleged hazing incidents are prompting season cancellations and coach firings. Will you be next?

At Northwestern University, head football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired in July after multiple allegations of sexual abuse among players and racist comments by coaches. The university now faces more than a dozen lawsuits across multiple sports.

In 2021, a high school football player in Proctor, Minnesota, was sexually assaulted by a teammate during a hazing ritual that some allege was a "prevalent practice" — and one that district officials knew about. The team's entire season was canceled

The latest: In Mitchell, South Dakota, six members of the American Legion baseball team — ranging in age from 17 to 19 — have been charged as adults on charges of second-degree rape. Three others from the team have pending charges in juvenile court.

Importantly, nobody has been declared guilty in the South Dakota case, but something more serious than hazing appears to have happened on a team trip — something that the Pennington County state's attorney believes warrants charges. The team's season was canceled.

Now, back to the question: Are coaches throughout the region paying attention? Are they taking steps to ensure that hazing, potentially illegal activity and all antiquated rituals are completely and unequivocally eliminated from their programs?

All coaches should be reviewing these instances with their teams, sternly reminding players that hazing cannot and will not be tolerated.

Anyone who scoffs simply needs to review the lawsuits, firings and cancellations that continue to make headlines across the nation. It's not at all funny, and people's lives are being ruined — victims as well as otherwise good kids who momentarily lose their sense of right and wrong.

As the start of the fall sports season begins, school administrators, athletics directors and coaches must educate students about the impropriety of hazing. They need to help youngsters make sound and reasonable decisions — something that doesn't always happen with developing teenage brains, especially when mob mentality kicks in.

They may not realize the gravity of the situation. That's why words from you — coaches, administrators, parents — are so important.

A recent Associated Press report hints that the problem often originates in high school.

"I think it's happening more often than people realize and we see it making the headlines around what's happening in high school locker rooms," Elizabeth Allan, a professor at the University of Maine who has studied hazing on campus, told the AP. "And so students are coming to college often having experienced hazing in their high school athletics programs."

So kids need to be repeatedly reminded. They need to know that some stupid ritual that has been performed at their school for years could actually be illegal and could mar them for life. And they need to know it's just wrong — no matter how seemingly innocent hazing might be.

With the 2023 fall sports season getting underway, here's our advice: Follow the lead of Vanderbilt University football coach Clark Lea. Upon hearing of the hazing scandal at Northwestern, he sent a link to the news story to his players, making them aware of the issue.

The idea is "for us to create a culture where we have those boundaries, where people can speak up and say, hey, this isn't quite what I like, or this isn't what I wanted and give us a chance to make adjustments and shifts, before you get anything that's big that blows up on you," Lea said during a press conference, as quoted in Nashville's newspaper, The Tennessean. "That's kind of the goal."

Don't miss this opportunity, coaches. If you aren't proactive on this, you may regret it.